Fish Farms

[wildmanyeah]

Those of us who post on this Forum will never reach a consensus on the subject no matter what the evidence.
How about this, excerpt from a Toronto Globe and Mail story.
"Dr. Miller classified the disease as HSMI (heart and skeletal muscle inflammation) while Mr. Marty rejected that definition."
"Dr. Marty wrote by avoiding the definition of HSMI in his work the aquaculture industry in B.C. was able to say its fish were not infected with HSMI."
Now that's what I call evading the issue.
Do we have independent testing for HSMI or do we not?
The same Dr. Marty that once said PRV did not exist in B.C. and then claimed he discovered it.
Perhaps Bones, Dave, Shuswap or Birdsnest (or perhaps Wildmanyeah, as he seems to be good at digging up stuff) can provide a site showing all the disease, sea lice and other parasites testing that is being done on a regular basis, who conducted the test and what were the results.
Round and round it goes...we can only hope B.C. will follow the Washington State example by banning Open Net Pen Fish Farms.

Fogged in I've asked many times for the same sort of information from the anti fish farm people. Show me the damage they have caused to pacific stocks and also show much the number or % that salmon stocks will recover if salmon farms are removed.

I also asked this question to a member of the salmon defenders who goes to all their protests ect..

This was their response to me

"As you know fish farms are just part of the problem and I know you also know the other factors that have caused the decline the last number of years, we are all to blame as well."

So basically even if we remove the fish farms all the other larger factors are still going to cause salmon stocks to decline. This is from someone who puts their heart and time into the fight.

Yes I agree that they should be moved to land but surely you can see that they won't be built in BC. Also our own recreational fishery is in danger from the "other factors" Even with fish farms removed this will still be a battle. Not only that but those "other factors" are a cause for alarm in our Halibut fishery and our Rockfish fishery.

Fogged in I also know you know about the Strategic Salmon Health Initiative (SSHI) So claiming that Farms are not being tested or publishing their findings is hogwash. If you want to check it out go here

https://www.psf.ca/blog/discovery-hsmi-bc-salmon-farm

 

[wildmanyeah]

Phase two is under way currently so I guess we need to wait and see what the results are.

The Strategic Salmon Health Initiative

The Strategic Salmon Health Initiative was initiated by the Pacific Salmon Foundation, Genome BC and Fisheries and Oceans Canada to investigate issues related to the survival of juvenile salmon during their ocean migration.

The overall goal of SSHI is to discover the microbes present in BC’s Pacific salmon that may reduce the productivity and performance of our wild Pacific salmon. As part of that, it will try to clarify the debate about the presence of microbes in wild, hatchery, and aquaculture fish and the potential interactions of open net-pen salmon farming and migrating Pacific salmons.
Phase 1 of the SSHI established a foundational tissue library of both cultured and wild salmon. With the successful outcome of Phase 2a, those samples will now undergo analysis in Phase 2b using the Fluidigm BioMark™ research platform. A portion of the collected tissue samples will also undergo:
 histopathological analysis and gene expression profiling to identify microbes most likely to associate with disease; and
 epidemiology analyses to identify distributional patterns of microbes in wild, hatchery and aquaculture salmon.

Phase 2b is expected to take from 24-36 months, with results reported throughout that time.

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Strategic-Salmon-Health-Initiative-SSHI

Here read this some more ammo for you to use against fish farms Have at it boys

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._disease_development_in_wild_migrating_salmon

 

[wildmanyeah]

Farm audit samples

VDD biomarkers were tested on combined tissues of 240
moribund/recently dead farmed Atlantic salmon and 68
farmed Chinook salmon collected through a regulatory farm
audit program (Table 1C). Because our previous two validations
showed that the VDD panel had discriminatory capabilities
across tissues, we reasoned that this panel may still work
effectively in combined tissue samples. Histopathology and
clinical data had been applied previously to diagnose known,
well characterized diseases, and qRT-PCR data performed
across 49 infectious agents were available to identify known
pathogens and validate these diagnoses. The application of
the VDD panel to the audit samples offered perhaps the most
complex co-infection scenario imaginable as dying fish are
likely the most vulnerable to opportunistic pathogens. Most
samples contained mixed infections with 2–10 agents identified
per individual. Only two viruses were commonly
observed across samples, PRv (69%) and erythrocytic necrosis
virus (ENv) (21%), a DNA virus that causes erythrocytic
inclusion body syndrome (EIBS). Unfortunately we did not
have the blood smears to diagnose EIBS, so this disease was
left off of our differentials.

Overall, 30% of Atlantic salmon and 50% of Chinook
salmon were diagnosed to a specific disease as the cause of
death, confirmed by molecular detection of the etiological
agents associated with pathologically identified diseases.
VDD panel validations to differentiate viral from bacterial
and parasitic diseases were based only on samples with specific
diagnoses. Commonly diagnosed infectious diseases in
farmed Atlantic and Chinook salmon included those caused
by bacterial agents [rickettsiosis, bacterial kidney disease
(BKD), mouth rot, vibriosis and winter ulcer], parasitic agents

(Loma) and viral agents [heart and skeletal muscle inflammation
(HSMI), jaundice/anemia]. We applied unsupervised PCA
to the VDD panel datasets containing samples with HSMI
(Atlantic) or jaundice/anemia (Chinook) and each bacterial or
parasitic disease, removing fish diagnosed with bacterial or parasitic
diseases that also carried PRv loads >100 copies per μl, the
agent associated with both viral diseases. This cut-off was
determined empirically as the approximate lower load limit
of PRv associated with either viral disease. In each case, PC1,
which explained 63% of the variation in Atlantic salmon and
78% in Chinook salmon, differentiated fish with viral versus
bacterial/parasite infections (Fig. 6). In Atlantic salmon, there
was a single HSMI outlier that was not tightly contained
within the PC1-negative ‘viral’ cluster (roughly defined by
PC1 loading <−5), but was still negatively loaded (−1); this
fish had only weak heart lesions and carried moderate loads
of PRv (102 copies; possibly a recovery fish) (Fig. 6). There
were also occasional fish diagnosed with bacterial diseases
that clustered as ‘VDD.’ In Atlantic salmon, this included 3 of
24 fish with mouth rot, one of three fish with winter ulcer,
one of five fish with rickettsiosis, and one of three fish with
vibriosis. In Chinook salmon, two of the six fish with Loma
clustered at the margins of the jaundice VDD samples. As in
each case, these fish were outliers to the other samples under
the same diagnostic category, we suspected that they may carry
a co-infection with a virus that was not on our panel or an
uncharacterized strain of PRv that our assay did not detect;
high throughput sequencing is being pursued on these samples,
with novel viruses already identified (K. Miller unpublished
data). The only viral-bacterial contrasts that did not
consistently yield strong differentiation with viral disease
samples were those involving BKD (Fig. 7), a bacterial disease
caused by the intracellular bacterium R. salmoninarum.

 

[terrin]

but they already do. the problem is you no not agree and never will or maybe you will agree if Almo takes the samples and uses her lab?

"There was a program aired on national television with allegations about the integrity of the system in B.C.," he said. "It was the result of another scientist that works for the federal government making public statements about the integrity of our process. I think all British Columbians would expect that we will do everything we can to reinforce public confidence in these institutions."
A B.C. government website says the Animal Health Centre is the leading accredited full-service veterinary laboratory in Western Canada, offering more than 400 laboratory diagnostic tests for agents that may be found in wild and domestic birds, mammals, fish, reptiles and amphibians.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...-integrity-of-fish-farm-testing-lab-1.4373076

As a trustee of our Wild Salmon resource your fudiciary duty should be one of a trustee and the idea of being a public not for profit lab and doing tests for the very same outfits your supposed to be monitoring has a very bad smell and the auditor would well know this. Can't find their full report but check this out and ask yourself if that would fly in the real world having the fox guard the henhouse.
Miller accused Gary Marty, the main fish health pathologist at the Animal Health Center, of downplaying the threat of PRV and suggesting that the lab could be conflicted because it also carries out tests for fish farmers.

But the Deloitte report didn't find any conflict.

“Our independent assessment of the AHC did not identify any evidence of financial or technical conflict of interest regarding the diagnostic activities of the AHC,” the Deloitte report concludes.

 

[wildmanyeah]

Status:
Phase 2b funding from Genome BC was signed off in April 2016, and research has progressed quickly. In May, the SSHI team announced the novel finding of Heart and Skeletal Muscle Inflammatory (HSMI) disease on one of the four salmon farms that were sampled over the entire ocean production cycle by the SSHI researchers. While the disease was diagnosed using the world-recognized pathological standard of inflammatory lesions in heart and skeletal muscle tissue, the researchers were also able to show that, as in other parts of the world, piscine orthoreovirus (PRV) was associated with the disease both statistically and through its distribution within the tissues and infected cells, and that clinical signs of the disease were also present. A manuscript on this finding, led by PSF-supported veterinary pathologist Emiliano Di Cicco, is now in the final stages of review for publication. PRV has been the subject of an ongoing court case, and these data are now being carefully examined by policy makers within DFO.

The SSHI team obtained 900 samples of farmed salmon through the DFO Audit program, and has completed the infectious agent monitoring and histopathology data collection on these fish; these data are now being analyzed by Postdoctoral fellows (supported by PSF and MITACS) conducting epidemiological research at University of Prince Edward Island (UPEI) to identify linkages between infectious agents and pathology on farms. One finding of note is a higher incident and diversity of infectious agents observed in farmed Chinook versus farmed Atlantic salmon.

A smolt out-migration study was undertaken encompassing infectious agent monitoring of >1,800 Chinook Salmon and is presently being analyzed and incorporated into a manuscript. The manuscript will describe potential pathogens infecting outmigrating Fraser River Chinook smolts emanating from freshwater hatcheries and transmitted in the early marine environment (first 9 months) and will show that half of the 32 microbes detected originated in freshwater. Moreover the study identifies a half dozen microbes that show seasonal shifts in prevalence and load in the ocean consistent with the potential for impact on the migratory salmon.

A study linking acoustic tracking and microbe and host transcription profiling funded through NSERC co-funding found that Sockeye smolts with enhanced anti-viral immune activation and infection with the IHN virus suffered high migratory failure during early down-stream migration (Jeffries et al. 2014). A follow-up study was undertaken and showed that fish carrying the IHN virus were 34 times more likely to be eaten by resident bull trout in the clear waters of the Chilcotin River, which may explain the early high losses associated with this virus; this work is part of a PhD thesis being defended in July 2016. A similar study on predation by Rhinoceros Auklets also carried out by the team also showed that infection status was associated with increased risk of predation. Together, these data suggest that 1) predators may increase the overall health of salmon populations by removing infected individuals and reducing risk of transmission, 2) sub-lethal impacts of infection that impact salmon performance (e.g. swimming, schooling, behavior, visual acuity, etc) likely puts them at greater risk of predation, perhaps even during early stages of disease development, and 3) if predators preferentially remove infected individuals, it will be quite rare to sample migratory fish in a late-stage of disease, making it very difficult to utilize classical diagnostic approaches to understand disease impacts on wild fish.

With co-funding from the DFO Genomic Research and Development Initiative, the SSHI team has added to their arsenal of host biomarkers a panel of genes that together can predict the development of a viral disease (VDD) state and can distinguish fish that are latent carriers of salmon viruses from those that are undergoing active, disease causing infections. This VDD panel has been validated to work across multiple viral species, salmon species, and salmon tissues, and can even predict the presence of a systemic viral disease state based on sampling of non-destructive gill tissue. Moreover, it works in the presence of numerous co-infecting organisms and can distinguish viral from bacterial infections. This disruptive technology moves the molecular monitoring program of the SSHI from pathogen detection to disease detection and will be expanded to recognize bacterial disease states and those brought on by different classes of microparasites.

 

[terrin]

https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/blt/2015/12/cartoon.jpg What hat are you wearing?

 

[agentaqua]

Should salmon infected with Infectious Salmon Anemia be sold?
The Broadcast
March 19, 2018
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1190355523831/

 

[fogged in]

Should salmon infected with Infectious Salmon Anemia be sold?
The Broadcast
March 19, 2018
http://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1190355523831/

Yet another GREAT post by agentaqua!!!
Well worth the 13 plus minutes it takes to hear the interview!!!
Susan Farquharson Director of the Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association (ACFFA) trying to defend the story didn't and couldn't really address the real issue!!
Hope this interview hits the printed press, where it will be easier to follow!!

 

[bones]

Do we have independent testing for HSMI or do we not?

just so we dont keep going round and round what it YOUR definition of testing?

 

[bones]

Perhaps Bones, Dave, Shuswap or Birdsnest (or perhaps Wildmanyeah, as he seems to be good at digging up stuff) can provide a site showing all the disease, sea lice and other parasites testing that is being done on a regular basis, who conducted the test and what were the results.

i've already shown the sealice counts and reports........ you ignored them clearly because your asking again. would you like to reread the older post or should i repost them? i only ask because last time i reposted you bitched..... it's as old news i was just reposting. DO you want to see them again?

 

[agentaqua]

Some of the problems wrt current testing by CFIA/DFO - I previously outlined at posts at:
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...sent-bc-salmon-farms.64482/page-4#post-821997
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...sent-bc-salmon-farms.64482/page-7#post-853839

I think Kristi Miller-Saunders genomics testing gets around most of those issues.....

 

[bones]

wow took 9 mins https://open.canada.ca/data/en/dataset/3cafbe89-c98b-4b44-88f1-594e8d28838d

 

[bones]

in case your confused click this link

 

[Birdsnest]

Some of the problems wrt current testing by CFIA/DFO - I previously outlined at posts at:
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...sent-bc-salmon-farms.64482/page-4#post-821997
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...sent-bc-salmon-farms.64482/page-7#post-853839

I think Kristi Miller-Saunders genomics testing gets around most of those issues.....

Let me guess, but not for ISAv. So your saying that KMS's testing systems are good for those issues but not other issues like ISA? Im just wondering because you seem to flip back and forth a lot. I mean one moment your all about the science and the next moment if the science isn't in your preferred flavour of narrative you indirectly categorize it as a conspiracy theory with out using the term. I see now.
Lets not forget that KMS confirms there is no ISA in BC along side Washington and Alaska. Heres that video if your again. See the 4 minute mark. Ya gota wonder why she is laughing as she begins stating she doesn't thing salmon aquaculture is causing problems.

Kristy Millar Saunders: No ISAv in BC @ 33:40 in this video which happens to be a presentation the the work WMY posted earlier.

I might ad that if you watch the video it becomes very clear that farm fish are being rigorously tested in this research so to say there is no transparency and info if being withheld then I would ask: what info? Seems pretty complete to me.

Note: It certainly isn't my intention to be repetitive reposting these videos however they respond well to most recent posts on the topic. Sorry to those who retained this info the first time I posted them. Bare with me.

 

[agentaqua]

We already had this debate, BN. Yes - ISAv was found in BC. See posts:
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...-b-c-’s-wild-salmon-stocks.67968/#post-857607
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/foru...s-wild-salmon-stocks.67968/page-2#post-857728

As far as PRv goes:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188690

Weight of evidence for longer-term PRV presence in BC

Siah et al. [1] cite detection of PRV in a wild Steelhead trout (O. mykiss) collected in 1977 in support of longer-term PRV presence in BC. This result is cited from Marty et al. [14], who provided no S1 segment sequence information to verify the PRV strain identity as per the sequence groupings reported by both Kibenge et al. [8] and Garseth et al. [15]. The recent discovery of the widespread occurrence of PRV-2 across the North Pacific (Takano et al. 2016[16]) raises the question: Was the 1977 steelhead infected with PRV-2 or PRV? In absence of S1 sequencing this uncertainty cannot be resolved.

Furthermore, this result could not be replicated by a second laboratory (Purcell and Thompson 2014 [17]) and therefore warrants qualification as a non-repeatable result and a suspect positive lacking sufficient robustness to provide evidence critical to the temporal presence of PRV in BC.

Sampling inadequacies
The description of the temporal and spatial distribution of the samples reported on by Siah et al. [1] is inadequate to support the conclusion that PRV is endemic to BC.

AND MANY MORE REASONS IN ARTICLE...

Conclusion
We conclude that the longer-term presence of PRV in BC prior to 2001 has not been adequately described and that the evidence that the virus was introduced from Norway is more robust than the hypothesis that PRV is endemic to the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Supporting information S1 Table. Piscine orthoreovirus segment S1 nucleotide sequences analyzed in this study.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marty has undoubtedly been successful in sowing doubt on behalf of the pro-FF lobby - rather than protecting wild stocks on behalf of the general public - and the pro-FF lobby haven't critically examined his assertions - or maybe didn't want to...

 

[Dave]

So many reports, so many opinions, but after 40 years we are no closer to anything measurable irt how many wild salmon are killed by salmon farms. Doesn’t that seem strange to some of you?

 

[Birdsnest]

We already had this debate, BN. Yes - ISAv was found in BC. See posts:
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/index.php?threads/what’s-destabilizing-b-c-’s-wild-salmon-stocks.67968/#post-857607
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/index.php?threads/what’s-destabilizing-b-c-’s-wild-salmon-stocks.67968/page-2#post-857728

As far as PRv goes:

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0188690

Weight of evidence for longer-term PRV presence in BC

Siah et al. [1] cite detection of PRV in a wild Steelhead trout (O. mykiss) collected in 1977 in support of longer-term PRV presence in BC. This result is cited from Marty et al. [14], who provided no S1 segment sequence information to verify the PRV strain identity as per the sequence groupings reported by both Kibenge et al. [8] and Garseth et al. [15]. The recent discovery of the widespread occurrence of PRV-2 across the North Pacific (Takano et al. 2016[16]) raises the question: Was the 1977 steelhead infected with PRV-2 or PRV? In absence of S1 sequencing this uncertainty cannot be resolved.

Furthermore, this result could not be replicated by a second laboratory (Purcell and Thompson 2014 [17]) and therefore warrants qualification as a non-repeatable result and a suspect positive lacking sufficient robustness to provide evidence critical to the temporal presence of PRV in BC.

Sampling inadequacies
The description of the temporal and spatial distribution of the samples reported on by Siah et al. [1] is inadequate to support the conclusion that PRV is endemic to BC.

AND MANY MORE REASONS IN ARTICLE...

Conclusion
We conclude that the longer-term presence of PRV in BC prior to 2001 has not been adequately described and that the evidence that the virus was introduced from Norway is more robust than the hypothesis that PRV is endemic to the eastern Pacific Ocean.
Supporting information S1 Table. Piscine orthoreovirus segment S1 nucleotide sequences analyzed in this study.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marty has undoubtedly been successful in sowing doubt on behalf of the pro-FF lobby - rather than protecting wild stocks on behalf of the general public - and the pro-FF lobby haven't critically examined his assertions - or maybe didn't want to...

So your saying that Kristy Millar Saunders is wrong? You seem to refuse to say it. Do you refuse to say it because you have always supported her 150%. And now you are conflicted. And what is it in this case. Is it going to be that her isa science is bad or are you flipping to a conspiracy response. I only bring it up again because you keep bringing up her science as legit. We all agree this is an honest woman willing to call out her own bosses and government.

 

[agentaqua]

No, I don't think I am the one who is either conflicted or confused. As I previously mentioned on post #33:
https://www.sportfishingbc.com/forum/index.php?threads/what’s-destabilizing-b-c-’s-wild-salmon-stocks.67968/page-2#post-857728

Well, kristi was reporting on the samples from the dates (from 2013 onwards) and places (Fraser River and Salish Sea) they received samples from for the Strategic Salmon Health Initiative (SSHI): https://marinesurvivalproject.com/research_activity/list/disease-health/

Unless you can prove that Oweekeno Lake was magically airlifted to the Salish Sea - she isn't reporting on Oweekeno stocks - unless you have some other information. She certainly isn't reporting on the samples collected anywhere before 2013 (including the previous Molly Kibenge Cultus Lake, and Rick Routledge's Oweekeno Lake samples). She most certainly did not parrot the CFIA script that: "ISAv is not found in BC".

Because she didn't find ISAv in the places and dates where she received samples from - doesn't mean that other places and dates did not have ISAv - nice try, though. "A" for effort on this one; "F" for content and understanding, though.

It also does not mean that ISAv may or may not still be percolating away somewhere else - like Oweekeno Lake - or that previous outbreaks of ISAv didn't had a serious population-level effect on local stocks that we are still recovering from today.

Maybe ISAv even died-out before it mutated into a less virulent strain (and wouldn't that be great!) - and Kristi talks about this in that same video you posted - about highly virulent disease-causing organisms being on the reportable disease list for that reason of causing acute outbreaks with massive mortality - then dying-out since they kill off their hosts. She also talks about the difference with PRv - being more of a chronic disease - and the difficulties in using cell culture for confirmation - supporting what I said earlier; and that certain strain of PRv are indeed infective to Pacific Salmon - again supporting what I said earlier.

This all corroborates what I was saying earlier.

 

[agentaqua]

So many reports, so many opinions, but after 40 years we are no closer to anything measurable irt how many wild salmon are killed by salmon farms. Doesn’t that seem strange to some of you?

It actually doesn't actually seem strange to me that our regulators hide fish farm disease outbreak information so that the disease impacts can't be studied. They also would be sued as part of any class action law suit over the impacts of releasing a novel disease onto naive stocks. DFO and CFIA both use Justice Canada lawyers who well understand legal liability and are in contact w industry lawyers as well.

 

[Birdsnest]

Ok so she and her team tested 14000 fish up and down the coast for ISAv and you have selected from a group that she has not tested. Well THATS convenient for your narrative. But isn't it a flip flop for you to look at it this differently now. How many years have we been on here and you and your believers have always stated ISA was a huge deal and found everywhere but now its just a tiny bit here and maybe a teeny bit there you say.

It actually doesn't actually seem strange to me that our regulators hide fish farm disease outbreak information so that the disease impacts can't be studied. They also would be sued as part of any class action law suit over the impacts of releasing a novel disease onto naive stocks. DFO and CFIA both use Justice Canada lawyers who well understand legal liability and are in contact w industry lawyers as well.

I would be far worse if they were found to be holding back findings of reportable diseases and you would think that people like KMS would be more than agreeable to blow the whistle on that scenario. You really think all those scientist would risk their careers and reputations?. Just imagine the lawsuit in that case! Some pretty selective narratives there agent that really lack thought id say.